Racing Stripes (2005)

Now that my son is getting older, he's able to focus his attention for longer periods of time. While I wouldn't want to attempt taking him to a movie theater just yet, he does very well with watching DVDs at home. He can sit through about 45 minutes of a typical children's movie before getting bored, which usually means we need at least two sittings to get through an entire film. Our latest movie-viewing adventure, the 2005 release Racing Stripes, was one that he chose himself based on the DVD cover picture.

The film opens with a torrential downpour that's forcing a traveling circus to pack up and leave in a hurry. Since haste makes waste, we get the feeling that something will be overlooked or left behind, and that is indeed what happens. A baby zebra in a cardboard box is left in the middle of the road. It doesn't take long, however, before another car comes along and stops just in time to avoid running over the box. The man turns out to be Nolan Walsh, and he just happens to have a farm where he can keep the baby zebra for the night.

Nolan brings the zebra home, and his 13-year-old daughter Channing (played by Hayden Panettiere) instantly falls in love with the animal. She names it Stripes and wants to keep it, but Nolan is in favor of finding the rightful owners. We never do get to see if an attempt was made to locate the circus because the movie fast-forwards three years and we jump to a now 16-year-old Channing and a much bigger Stripes (voiced by Frankie Muniz).

Since this is the kind of movie where the animals talk and engage in their own dramas away from the human eye, we soon get to meet the other major players on the farm. First, there's Tucker (Dustin Hoffman), an aging pony who used to be instrumental in training race horses back when Nolan Walsh was known as the best trainer in Kentucky (until he gave it up after his wife died in a riding accident). Then there's Franny (Whoopi Goldberg), a wise goat who's been around for a long time too. We also have a rooster named Reggie (Jeff Foxworthy), two CGI-animated flies named Buzz and Scuzz (Steve Harvey and David Spade), a rival horse named Trenton's Pride (Joshua Jackson), and a love interest named Sandy (Mandy Moore).

The basic plotline here is that Stripes doesn't realize he's a zebra and is different from the thoroughbred racehorses that he sees practicing at the nearby track. He wants to race and is convinced that he can beat any of the horses out there. The other horses laugh at him and put him down, but the animals at the Walsh farm are on his side. The only thing Stripes has to do is get someone to ride him so they can see how fast he is.

His opportunity comes when the animals concoct a plan to sabotage Channing's dirt bike (yes, her father doesn't want her to ride a horse, but apparently motorized dirt bikes are just fine). She'll be late for work if she doesn't find an alternative mode of transportation soon. She asks her father to let her ride Stripes and he reluctantly agrees to do so just once. Of course, it turns out that Stripes is very fast and Channing convinces her father to train Stripes for the big race that's coming up in a month. This being a children's movie, I'm sure you can figure out how everything ends!

Overall, I have to say that Racing Stripes was a decent enough movie for young children. My son really enjoyed seeing the zebra and other animals "talking" throughout the movie and the images on the screen held his interest tolerably well. Older children and adults might not derive as much pleasure from the recycled plot devices here, but that's to be expected with most movies aimed at younger audiences.

The movie is only an hour and a half long, so I say go ahead and rent the DVD. If nothing else, you'll at least have fun trying to guess which actors are voicing some of the main characters!